By: Kody Hanor
Ever since she was little, the girl had heard scratching sounds coming from underneath her bed. At first, her parents dismissed it as a mouse, a loose floorboard, or her imagination. But as the years passed, the sounds grew sharper, more deliberate. Every night, just as the house settled into silence, it sounded as if claws were scraping against the wood, dragging closer and closer to where she slept.
She stopped leaving the closet door open, stopped checking under the bed, and stopped asking her parents to believe her. She didn’t want to see what it could possibly be. But the scratching always returned— persistent, patient, whispering in a language only fear could gauge.
One night, after a long day at catholic school, she fell into a deep sleep. Around two in the morning, the scratching came again. louder, slower, desperate. Her heart pounded against her chest as the sound crept closer.
Then she heard it. A slow and wet exhale, and the unmistakable creak of floorboards on the other side of her room.
She froze. The scratching too.
A new shadow stretched across her bedroom floor, uneasily still. Emily’s eyes traced up the length of the room, and there he was— a man standing at the foot of her bed. pale and disturbingly thin, his face devoured in shadow. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He sat there, and he stared.
